Stockton volunteers help rebuild after Katrina

Wednesday

Aug 29, 2007 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2007 at 6:12 AM

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - Even two years later, photographs and television images do not adequately convey the magnitude of damage to the Gulf Coast. In May, a team of eight men and women sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Stockton got to see the devastation firsthand.

Rick Brewer

Editor's note: Record staff writer Rick Brewer spent a week in May in Pascagoula, Miss., with a local volunteer crew helping paint a Hurricane Katrina-ravaged duplex.

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - Even two years later, photographs and television images do not adequately convey the magnitude of damage to the Gulf Coast.

In May, a team of eight men and women sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Stockton got to see the devastation firsthand.

I was among the group that spent a week taping, priming and painting Thomas Beard's small duplex in Pascagoula, Miss. We were among 31,350 volunteers who have donated 1.2 million hours to the relief effort through the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program since the storm. The church's Louisville, Ky.-based headquarters estimates crews have provided about $20 million in volunteer wages to completely rebuild 565 houses and work on 3,380 homes in five communities along the Gulf Coast. The church still seeks volunteer work teams and is committed to working in the region for at least another three years.

On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, at its peak a Category 5 storm, made landfall in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, battering New Orleans, Biloxi and other towns along a 90-mile section of the Gulf of Mexico. Gale-force winds and unrelenting rain filled houses, flooded streets and breached levees. Yachts and riverboat casinos were unmoored. People and animals were killed. Others were forced to evacuate, and a region was rendered practically homeless.

"It was like a tropical storm that just didn't end," said Beard, whose duplex was flooded with almost a yard of water within the storm's first 45 minutes.

He and many others who found shelter in the storm had no shelter when Katrina passed - and still don't today. Some $7.2 billion in federal rebuilding grants have been awarded to home- and infrastructure-building projects in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and approximately 14 million volunteer hours have been donated by 1.1 million people throughout the United States and Canada, according to relief organizations. Still, thousands of evacuees have not returned to their homes, and many may never do so.

Driving east on Interstate 10 not far outside New Orleans lies a former Six Flags amusement park. The twisted steel of large roller coasters still stands in swampy grassland. But the park, which was submerged 10 feet, has not reopened, because the company's insurers have refused to pay and the issue is in litigation.

Beard received an initial check from his insurance company for $157 after the storm ruined his duplex. Many insurers paid similarly small amounts, or none at all, to Katrina victims because the houses suffered water damage during the flood, and that was specifically excluded on many policies. A recent court decision upheld insurance carriers' right not to pay Katrina victims.

Those without the luxury of living elsewhere while reconstruction occurs mostly are confined to FEMA-issued white trailers. Approximately 120,000 trailers were given to Katrina victims, and makeshift parks are still home to hundreds of families, many lower income, and relief workers. Other trailers are perched in the front yard of residences while their owners await moving back into the houses.

Moving on with their lives has been equally difficult. The week the group from First Presbyterian Church was there, Beard's grandmother passed away. The same week, his best friend and duplex mate, Donald Myers, was informed he would not be allowed to return to his former job. Myers worked as a chef in a Biloxi riverboat casino before the business and his apartment were leveled.

Yet Myers said the crew's contribution to the duplex rebuilding that week provided him a spark of hope.

"This is the first time since Katrina our duplex looks like a home and not a construction site," he said.

That statement occurred before the group returned to New Orleans for an afternoon in the French Quarter. The bustling and sometimes-seedy tourist area was spared along with the Crescent City's central business district when Katrina came ashore. To keep those economically important areas dry, 65 percent of the city's remaining land - mostly where people live - was flooded with upward of 12 feet of water. .

Even the famed 165-year-old St. Charles streetcar line was shut down for more than 18 months after the storm. New Orleans residents, however, prefer to look for the good. They call "voluntourists" their favorite development of Katrina's aftermath. Voluntourism is a coined phrase that refers to those, like the church group from San Joaquin County, who spend part of their vacation helping rebuild the region.

"Thanks for coming" became an oft-heard refrain when residents noticed the group's blue T-shirts announcing they were part of a volunteer construction squad.

"The first time we heard it, we didn't know someone was speaking to us. But as we adapted to it, that small phrase of gratitude reminded us that we all share in life's sorrows and successes," said Nancy Lindell of Stockton.

One thankful New Orleans woman lounged along the Mississippi River promenade not far from where a pipe organist performs 30-minute concerts atop the paddle-wheel steamer Natchez. She refused to give her name but wouldn't let the group pass by without expressing how much she appreciated the work volunteers had done for her family - and providing hugs to each member.

Rebuilding is slow work - one house or apartment building needs several volunteer crews over many months to complete a job. The 565 houses Presbyterian work crews have so far finished represent less than one-half of 1 percent of those destroyed.